Richard Carpenter 1929-2012

Richard Carpenter, creator of Robin of Sherwood, died at the weekend. I first encountered him on BBC schools television as the host and writer of the Look and Read serial Cloudburst; aimed at slow-reading eight-year-olds this series was essential viewing for the literate pre-schooler in the 1970s. His credits as a writer of family television series for ITV were long - Catweazle, The Ghosts of Motley Hall, Dick Turpin and of course Robin of Sherwood. He also wrote the first series of The Scarlet Pimpernel for the BBC in the late 1990s, but while he started work on the second, the transmitted series was credited to other hands. I remember Mark Ryan, Nasir in Robin, praising 'Kip''s imagination when he visited the Oxford Arthurian Society in 1995. A few years later I went to a National Film Theatre retrospective of Carpenter's work. He deserves more attention than he receives.

Yes, it was the Grant-Shaw version. Carpenter's main change, according to publicity, was to develop the intelligence of the Pimpernel's wide, which is attested but never proven (in his view) in the Orczy books. In the Carpenterless second series, the wife was dispensed with, killed off between series.

I made it up in an attempt to express in a single word my dislike of the recent Robin Hood, apparently chosen for his winsome looks and carefully curated stubble. Just thinking of his chin makes me want to hit something. Preferably the chin, with a hammer.

One problem was that it was difficult to distinguish most of the men in it from one another, because they all had the same look. I couldn't see anything which any part of the audience might find heroic in them, and wasn't surprised, after I stopped watching, to see a listing along the lines of 'Marian marries Guy of Gisburne'.

Am I right in thinking that that Guy of Gisburne is going to be Thorin in the Hobbit movies? Now that's acting range.

A couple of nights ago we watched Excalibur* in which Robin of Sherwood's Guy plays Mordred.**

* Or, according to the DVD "Helen Mirren - Excalibur", which is a bit harsh on the other actors in the film with larger parts.** At least the grown-up Mordred. The child Mordred is played by that bloke who rides around on motorbikes with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

It's a good word. Could it perhaps be used apply to a certain badly-dressed particle physicist with weird lips who nevertheless seems to be physically attractive to a certain kind of teenage girl? Or is it more specifically used to refer to young men with winsome looks and carefully curated stubble?

Some notes by Richard Carpenter on possible directions for the series are mentioned at Spirit of Sherwood.

I'd have liked to have seen what BBC Scotland and incoming (but never to arrive) showrunner Sally Wainwright would have made of the 2000s Robin Hood had it continued for a fourth year, shorn of its lead (stubbled or otherwise) and with a new Robin. Robin of Sherwood still had more going for it, though.

Other chronicles

The Quest of the Parrot Knight

Journal of a knight in time

The memoirs of Sir Guinglain Le Parrot, sometime of the court of King Arthur, transported by means unknown to Brooks's Club in the 1780s, and facing a challenge to a drinking contest from Charles James Fox. To the Buff and Blue, and the Good Old Cause of the Whigs!